Brent Pierce, the real scumbag movershaker behind Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob) that's ostensibly fronted by Rahim Jivraj (purveyor of legal threats to this humble corner of cyberspace) is in the news. Ace scamsleuth David Baines of The Vancouver Sun has revisited the Brent Pierce story and notes what a sad and limp year the dude has had in 2010...so bad in fact, that he's selling his house to pay the multimillion dollar fines imposed upon him by the courts. It's all here, Rahim...check out what your boss has been up to behind the wheel, too.

10/8/10

I'm on this classic rap jag at the moment, dunno why. To be honest it was either this or Lou Reed's take a walk on the wild side that's been going thru my head all week. And this is funnier to watch (though less subversive).

Anyway, I love this tune and the vid is every bit as good as the awesome one for Body Movin' last week. What is it with rappers and top videos anyway? Next week we'll whack you with some serious guitars, folks. Promise.

A cute story that hit the wires less than an hour ago (thank you reader 'WW' for the headsup):

FAA issues fire warning for lithium batteries

WASHINGTON – Federal aviation officials are warning air carriers that new research shows lithium batteries are sensitive to heat and can ignite in flight if transported in cargo compartments that get too hot.The Federal Aviation Administration also acknowledged publicly for the first time Friday that a United Parcel Service 747-400 plane that crashed in Dubai last month killing both pilots was carrying a large quantity of lithium batteries.Since the early 1990s, there have been dozens of incidents of batteries igniting in flight. But it has not been known exactly what triggered many of the fires.FAA now says recent research has identified heat as the trigger and is offering air carriers advice on how to reduce the risk of fire.

Great Panther Silver (GPR.to) up 4.4% at $1.18. With silver moving back towards $23 again the market recognizes that even the dog producers can make money. They call it leverage, you either like it or you don't.

Ventana Gold (VEN.to) up a penny at $10 exactly. VEN saw some weird trading in the first seconds of trading today, down as low as $8.16. I know of one sharp dude who picked up 500 at $8.25 (no not me), which was something akin to being offered free money. The current $10 price does seem like sort sort of inflection point in this stock, doesn't it? Check the chart.

Fronteer (FRG) UNCH at U$7.45 and has put in a relatively quiet week, all things considered. Still weighed down by the XAU.to is the best guess, with people covering positions until it gets closed out. Once that's done with, the fun is likely to start up again.

Jaguar Mining (JAG) up 1.3% at U$6.95 and has rebounded a bit these last few days, but nothing to write home about. Those with a longer attention span than the MTV average will recall this stock closing out 2002 at U$11.19, which is commentary enough on the performance of its management team this year in the face of record gold prices.

Fortuna Silver (FVI.to) UNCH at $3.28 and another stock that's has a flattish week (counting start to finish and ignoring the silly selling Monday). the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on (aka dumbass sheep iz as dumbass sheep does).

By the way, early this morning subscribers got a Flash update that mentioned this humble scribe was adding to exposure one of the above stocks. Just sayin'.

This is a very disturbing story. In Bolivia, a baby was born on October 6th. The baby was then almost immediately taken away from its parents by government officials accompanied by police officers who cited the parents political leanings and beliefs as one of the main reasons their child was taken.

As it happens, the politics of the parents involved are anti-government but, according to their group, they are non-violent and peaceful protestors that take exception to the way their rights are being eroded by the current government. Be clear that it matters not whether I or you personally agree with their leanings (as it happens I don't), because the act of separating a newborn baby from its parents, and citing one of the main reasons as their political agenda that the current government disagrees with, is a level of State intervention that is simply mindblowing. Has Bolivia descended into some fascist state so quickly? Quite incredible and it's up to us to do something about it. How could the government of Evo Morales do such a thing while claiming its government is all about the emancipation of its people and striving for the common good?

Here's the link, go see for yourself this amazing English language report.And oh, by the way before you go click through I lied about one thing. It didn't happen in Bolivia, but in fact in the united states. Bolivia doesn't have anything to do with it, in fact. Just trying to make your brain cells work a bit on this Friday morning, kind reader, apologies for the deception.

Peru’s central bank may slow the pace of interest rate increases at its monthly meeting today as moderating inflation allays concern that South America’s sixth- biggest economy is overheating.

The seven-member board will probably raise the bank’s reference rate by a quarter-point to 3.25 percent from 3 percent, according to 12 of 16 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Three economists expect a third consecutive half-point increase, while one analyst forecasts a pause. The board will announce its decision after 6 p.m. New York timecontinues here

The Peruvian central bank’s surprise decision to keep the benchmark lending rate unchanged signals policy makers are seeking to stem the 3.6 percent rally in the sol this year, according to Banco Santander SA.

The seven-member board, led by bank President Julio Velarde, kept the bank’s reference rate at 3 percent, surprising all except one of 16 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Most analysts had predicted the central bank would raise rates for a sixth consecutive meeting.

“They’ve held the rate to control the inflow of dollars to the currency market,” said Gonzalo Navarro, head trader at Santander in Lima. “With inflation under control, the central bank can start to worry about the currency.”continues here

Yep, only one out of 16 of these overpaid dumbasses could name that tune, but they all have oh-so-intelligent comments to make on what the CenBank does once it's all over. About par for the course.

Are you ready for the media barrage, the hugs and kisses, the UpCloseAndPersonal stories, the tales of true courage, the overblown media circus bullshit? According to this morning's wires, the hole that they're drilling to rescue the 33 trapped Chilean miners is now just 40 metres from breaking through, that the miners have made a list and know their order of appearance up the pipe, that President Piñera is going to get his mega photo-op before jetting off to Europe on the 15th and it could well all go down this weekend. Meanwhile, your humble scribe notes that there are no less than 600 journalists on site at "Camp Hope", split roughly equally between national and foreign hacks, which means each miner gets 18 reporters to talk to each. Jeesh, the queue for the cocktail bar must be terrible, guys....

In unrelated news, Chile's congressional committee has agreed on the terms for the new royalty law being re-pushed through parliament by Piñera on the back of the trapped miners palarver and will likely get voted through in full parliament next week. The law means royalties on mining of between 4% and 15% til 2017. But like I say, totally unrelated, that one.

UPDATE: Latest latest is 1) breakthrough today and 2) miners get to come out Tuesday October 12th once the steel linings are fixed and ready in the tunnel. So now you know.

Today's featured company is Medoro Resources (MRS.v), as we again try to scrape away the surface gloss and doublespeak to get at what's really being said in the company NR this morning.

This is what they wrote:

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Oct. 8, 2010) - Medoro Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:MRSNews) announced today that it has retained the services of The Capital Lab Inc. to provide investor relations services, subject to regulatory approval. Capital Lab will develop and implement Medoro's investor communications and marketing program in support of the Company's growth strategy.

The investor relations agreement dated October 6, 2010, is effective as of September 15, 2010, and terminates on September 1, 2011. The agreement may be terminated by Medoro of Capital Lab upon 30 days' written notice. Under the terms of the agreement, Capital Lab will be paid a monthly fee of $10,000 (plus applicable taxes) for its investor relations services, plus an additional fee relating to the preparation of Medoro's annual report. Medoro will reimburse Capital Lab for expenses incurred in connection with its investor relations services. Capital Lab is also eligible to participate in Medoro's stock option plan.

Capital Lab is a Toronto-based company that provides strategic investor relations and business development solutions for international publicly listed companies in various industry sectors. It focuses on advising global companies during transition periods, as a part of their team, to provide immediate and full support throughout their growth and evolution.

Neither Capital Lab or its Principal, Belinda Labatte, has any interest, directly or indirectly, in Medoro or its securities, or any rights or intent to acquire such an interest.

Medoro also announced the resignation of Linda Dorrington as Director, Investor Relations of Medoro, effective as of September 30, 2010. The Company would like to thank Ms. Dorrington for her contributions to Medoro.

And this is what it means:

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Oct. 8, 2010) - Medoro Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:MRS - News) announced today that it has retained the services of The Capital Lab Inc. to provide investor relations services, subject to regulatory approval. Capital Lab will try and spin this underperforming dog in a way that will attract new suckers, keeps their attention away from the serious problems the company has with locals in Colombia and gets ten grand a month plus a seat on the options gravytrain in return for its marketing voodoo.

Medoro also announced the resignation of Linda Dorrington as Director, Investor Relations of Medoro, effective as of September 30, 2010 because....well, just look at the stock price performance and work it out for yourself.

...the percentage change of savings to GDP in Mexico, years 2000 and 2010

A big upmove. The reasons? According to Mexico's CNBV people, the number one reason is the obligatory savings now demanded by the private pensions system. Number two is voluntary savings via investment and savings accounts with financial entities.

10/7/10

Today I get a mail from the criminal scam pusher Christoph Berndt, aka boersenbrieflemming, who works for the scum-ridden promotion system in Germany under the auspices of Hank Van Alphen's Cardero Group of companies. Berndt writes:

Title: DRI

If you have cojones you should comment it.

Obviously he has a hard on about the move in Dorato (DRI.v) these last two days.

So certainly you scumbag asshole, anything to shine the light on the illegal affairs run by Frank Gagel and you, in cahoots with the board of directors at Cardero, the English language scum pusher "Value Pro" in Arizona and all the others in the spider's web of corporate deceit that give even the pushers in the Frankfurt bourse a bad name. Here's a comment:

Dorato Resources, in the midst of an all-time historic

bull run for gold, is still 14.29% down in 2010.

Happy now? Or perhaps, Christoph, it's about time your controllers told you to...

Canadian brokerage mining analysts have a hard time and suffer....from the size of their egos because it must be physically painful for them to squeeze through doorframes due to the enormous diameters involved. Rule One amongst the dumbasses in suits is never, but NEVER admit you're wrong or you made a mistake about anything because it's just not the done thing to be honest, is it?

However, if you do watch the sector carefully you get to see when the analyst has decided they've put their foot royally into it and pumped the wrong dog. Take for example Indi Gopinathan, analyst at Scotia that follows and has liked Minefinders (MFN) (MFL.to) for quite some time. Up to now Indi has kept bullish on MFN despite being such a pisspoor performer and has forgiven its trespasses. For example on August 5th, just after a bad set of numbers from MFN here's a report of her opinion:

"This was a miss on consensus and Indi (the analyst) believes any pullback on MFL today should be bought........ The Q2/10 quarter likely won’t change investor’s minds but that is backward looking and Indi believes the inflection point is right now."

Then on September 29th, when it turned out that 2q10 wasn't that "inflection point" after all (surprise surprise) and we're going to have to wait til 2011 (at least) for MFN to get its jive together, Indi was still stubbornly bullish, saying that "..any negative reaction to yesterday’s news (w)as a buying opportunity." Well, she sure got plenty of chances to buy!

However, today's Scotia daily report has Indi rather more subdued. As we mentioned in paragraph one of this post, the admissions of guilt and/or error are never explicit (that would never do) but now she's actually gone to see the Dolores trainwreck the talk from Indi about buying ops and such has disappeared. We now get this:

MFN: Minefinders Tour Takeaways (1-SO, US$14/sh target, Indi Gopinathan): Earlier this week, Minefinders hosted Scotia clients on a tour of the Dolores gold and silver mine in Chihuahua , Mexico . In the short term, it appears the liner tear issue will negatively impact both Q3 and Q4 production as all of the Phase 1 leach pad was taken off leach in August. Indi currently models Q3 production that is 40% below guidance with Q4 figures 8% lower than company expectations. Longer term, block model reconciliation could lead to a 10% grade improvement over the average reserve grade. While short term issues continue to plague the company, Indi reiterates her 1-Sector Outperform rating and US$14/sh target with the view that Dolores is a good asset and a potential M&A target.

The change is subtle, but when you're attuned to these things the message is clear enough and now IKN confidently predicts that Indi will "lower her guidance" on MFN the next time it misses anything from its current guidance slate. Going by this pathetic excuse for the mining company's track record, that will most probably happen very soon. DYODD, dude.

Rob McEwen is many things to many people, but only the dumb would take away from his genius for promotion. He smells the new money interest at exactly the right time, sets up the promo and WHACK WHACK WHACK the new investor sees just how cheap Minera Andes (MAI.to) is (according to the owner of 33% of the stock, that is) at just the right time and from several different angles....

Look, the copper!

Look we produce gold and silver!

Look at the exploration potential!

Look at what happened to AND.to recently, newbie!

....all the angles that us jaded longtooths have always seen for X or Y number of months or years while never respectfully moving the stock for him. So now, all us "yesbut" merchants that knocked Minera Andes (MAI.to) for so long and just used it for a quickflip 20% here/15% there trading vehicle get to look stupid, while those that believed McEwen and were equipped with the Zen-like patience are sitting on a heavy win from a very short space of time.

Rob McEwen, you are a true genius at this mining game. I salute and applaud your brilliance.

I can't believe this, I truly can't. Back in late September Brent Cook published a set of three You Tube videos, totally free to go watch (here, hereandhere) that took the viewer through a recent site visit Cook made to the Yukon area so red hot amongst the sector right now. In the three videos that total 16 minutes you get to see what this top quality economic geologist does, looks at and looks for when on a field trip and evaluationg whether the company running the show is a buy or not.

The videos contain a wealth of information, stacked to the brim with smarts about rocks and I defy anyone not to come away from then knowing more than they did, even the most experienced of professionals. As for the retail metalhead (i.e. you and me) it's impossible to miss these tutorials.

And that brings me to the utter shame you MUST feel immediately, retail metals and mining investor. I went and watched these vids when they first came out, thought they were bound to be a smash hit with tens of thousands of viewings etc etc. But then this morning a commenter left a "good BC vids" type comment on this post, so out of sheer curiosity I went to check on viewer number so far.

ONLY TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY ONE VIEWINGS FOR THESE VIDEOS!!

I can't believe this (and it's even less for parts two and three, 181 and 156). The information contained in these Brent Cook videos is 100% solid gold, but only 271 people (probably less, if you're like me and watched them over again) people have bothered to go see these videos. ARE YOU GUYS TOTAL MORONS? DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE STUPID FOREVER AND RIPPED OFF FOREVER? I mean, you must be really happy to be absolutely dumbass stooooooooopid about junior mining companies because you make NO EFFORT AT ALL TO EDUCATE YOURSELVES, do you? No, you much prefer to follow the scam-mongers of the mining commentary world that lead you by the nose into the exact stocks that make the maximum amount of money...for them.

HOW THE HELL CAN YOU IGNORE GREAT INFORMATION AND GET SUCKERED IN BY THE SCUMBALLS? Hang you head in shame immediately, mining traders.

So now the solution. WATCH THESE VIDEOS NOW. Get smart on rocks, dudettes and dudes. You need to see these most excellent videos and you need to see them right now. Take 16 minutes aout and watch what Cook has to tell you because his words will make you a better and more profitable investor, period. You have no excuses left not to watch these. Do it now. Right now.

The excellent portrait photo El Comercio is running on its front page today.

Click to expand cos it get very big

Congratulations. This Nobel Prize for literature is 100% deserved. On thinking, I really haven't agreed more fully with a Nobel decision ever. A cheer for MVLL, for his home town of Arequipa, for Peru, for his adopted Spain, for South America, but mostly a cheer for the beauty of his written word.

...silver the metal (using the ETF SLV as proxy) compared to ECU Silver (ECU.to), year to date.

This CotD going out to Mexico Mike. Just making sure he realizes just how freakin' stupid he looks these days. You take dirty money from scam companies to pump them and, Mister Kachanovsky, it will eventually blow up in your face.

UPDATE: No, I'm not "your pal" (a reader informs that you refer to me in that way). I'd rather see you in jail but unfortunately what you do isn't illegal...just totally immoral.

Since we first featured Batero Gold Corp (BAT.v) in the ‘Market Watching’ secion of IKN68, the stock has gone great guns (here right is the chart that shows the performance from then to now).

(chart not shown here on blog, but visualizes the six week run from the $1.20s to $1.90s)

It has been running a $10m bought deal placement first announced on September 24th (19) at $1.60 per unit (share plus half warrant at $2.35) but last week increased the placement (20), so assuming the original overallotment ($5m gross proceeds) is going to be filled as well, BAT is now looking to add $15.75m in gross proceeds to its coffers...all very tasty and good for anything the company wants to drill for the forseeable future.

Gold explorers are in a sweet spot right now and there are plenty of management teams out there raising cash on the back of the suddenly elevated share prices. Now, it’s your guess to my own as to whether this secular bull will continue, but it’s 100% unsurprising to see the sharper teams (that word deliberately chosen, as it’s a double-edged sword) out there adding cash and securing their medium-term futures as explorers.

BAT smacked of a decent opportunity when first highlighted, though not the profile your author personally prefers. Thusly it was featured as a headsup story in ‘Market Watching’ without making it to the formal ‘Stocks to Follow’ list. Here we are, six weeks later and the stock 53.6% higher. We’ll continue to outline opportunities without making them recos in the future, highly esteemed readership, because your author continues to be acutely aware that his way of investing is not the only way of investing.

Your humble scribe is bugging out, but only til later tonight. Got some non-biz stuff to attend to (which involves a beach). Til then, I'll leave you with the inimitable Jack

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.”

10/5/10

Your humble scribe ran this recording on his twatter last night and now it's time to note it here at IKN as well. It seems the northern milquetoast pardoners of explicit violence against Rafael Correa, all the hangwringing academics that try their best to follow S.Am affairs from up North and just end up looking teh stoopid every time, will finally have to admit that Ecuador's September 30th happenings that centred around the country's police force in Quito weren't just a call for social justice, or a protest gone wrong. As we pointed out on the blog last week it was clearly a coup attempt.

M'lud, we offer evidence. This link is to a recording of police radios that day and captures the ill and violent intent of the coupmongers all too clearly. In Spanish of course, you can either take my word for things or get your own translation done but amongst the choice phrases used by the police who fired tear gas canisters at their President and managed to shoot dead one of the military personnal that was shielding Correa as he left the hospital under fire in the late evening are the following:

It was an attempted coup. Sez me, sez Correa, sez all the Presidents of the region who signed the Unasur declaration from the right (Santos, Piñera) to the centre (García) to the left (Morales, Chávez) and all points in between. It's your choice to believe the bullshit CNN would like you to believe but me I like the truth, not gringospin lies.

Checkout Daily Show, Stewart was so good last night as he got in touch with his better Sanchez.

Fortuna Silver (FVI.to) up 5.9% at $3.24 and bouncing back from yesterday's handwringing. O RLY?c

Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob) down 8.9% on the day that the metal in its name hits a new all-time record. Now, let's just keep it simple and think about those two facts. See any clues about the real nature of this company?

Constitution Mining (CMIN.ob) down 10.0% at $0.27. See MRGP commentry.

Ventana Gold (VEN.to) up 4.3% at $10.57 on the back of another good NR with the new Aserradero zone showing gold too, now. IKN predicts this one much higher than today's price come December 31st 2010. So there.

Apparently and according tothis morning's press coverage those 33 Chilean miners could be out as soon as this weekend, as one of the drills is just 160m away from the underground dudes. Meanwhile we can report that apparently they've been getting a little fussier about supplies recently, at least by the evidence in this photo.

"...Okay, well and good: Promotional but no big red flags for me except the hosts are complex pegmatites, which are usually small and seldom have the size and grade to make mineable ore bodies, especially in the southwestern United States.

Love it! Y'see, it's a bit like the Ottotrans™ posts we run at this humble corner of cyberspace...only much better. When a ranting fool such as your author rips into these thingsit's one thing, but when somebody like Fulp, a professional and highly experienced geologist, gets busy on these "marginal companies" (let's say) and the way they obfuscate, bewilder and represent themselves as HarderBetterStrongerFaster than they are...well, it's another level. Go Mickey!

So go read Fulp's words yourself by clicking this link. You'll learn stuff about REEs, you'll learn about News Release red flags and you'll learn that there are people such as Mickey Fulp out there in the wild world of the interbwebnetpipes trying their best to protect you from scamsters. DYODD.

I am burdened with a memory. Back in the 1990's, wherever I was living at the time (four countries were in play in the period) I'd get home the end of a day and switch on CNN to watch Lou Dobbs on Moneyline (that period he did good work before he got all mouthy and anti things). At the time I personally nicknamed him "Lou AndTheNasdaqRoseBy Dobbs" because it seemed that phrase would come forth from his mouth nine out of ten programs.

So I look at that gold chart above and there's just a twinge of anxiety about what happening right now. Be clear I'm not calling any tops or ends of bull runs myself, it's more like displaying a bit of my own wall of worry, that phemonenom all longs suffer as they stay long through a bull run. DYODD, dudette. DYODD, dude.

Kitco has bolted on some journalists to its organization recently and now has 'Kitco News' up and running, which probably isn't a bad thing for us metalsheads. And if what we saw from new recruit Debbie Carlson yesterday evening is anything to go by, then there's quality on offer too. This paste-up is of a short but sweet report so I'm going to break with the norm here at IKN and re-print it all. It's also from the line known as "market nuggests" so there's plenty reason to go back and read more, lots of little snapshots on display:

(Kitco News) - With gold making new highs, investors are looking for forecasts for gold prices following actions of gold miners, central bankers or chartists. None of them have been right in the past 40 years, said Citigroup Global Markets. “When gold miners had to buy back massive hedges, they proved we should not look to them for gold-price forecasting. The same applies to central banks, which sold right at the bottom. Bankers don’t get it right, either. Many famous forecasters (high-profile academics and high-profile chartists), after gold had fallen from a high of $875/oz to $600/oz in 1981, forecast it would soon shoot above $1000. Instead, it entered a 20-year slumber party,” the bank wrote. “We now have popular forecasters (popular because they called sub-prime right) forecasting that gold is on its way to $4000/oz. It may well be. The history of unsuccessful forecasting shows it also may be on its way to $800/oz. And yet these high forecasts are no less popular than they were in 1981. As the famous saying goes, ‘Its deja vu all over again’.”

By Debbie Carlson of Kitco News

IKN fully agrees with Carlson, who uses a window created by C to ram home some plain truths to Kitco readers. Yup, them there industry experts (e.g. dumbasses in suits, dumbasses in hardhats and in the case of the newsletter writers dumbasses in pyjamas or underwashed t-shirts) are not to be relied upon by any sane person. Really. And definitely includes Jon Nadler of Kitco as well, of course. So what comes up next is not for Carlson (cos IKN has decided it likes her) but for all the other false friends and maniacs that would be our ego-ridden kings and gurus. Will you ALL please just

Newsfrom the Argentine Auto Chamber of Commerce, ACARA, will not go down well with anyone who's daft enough to think that the country is about to implode and die on us again (however many rabid righties might like to see people suffer).

Recent figures show that Auto sales are now at new record levels (the traditional December spikes notwithstanding). Get all the details from the ACARA website, right here.

Meanwhile, the cynical amongst us (gosh, I feel lucky not to be one of those) could note that the economic and life-standards rebound happening in Argentina is mightily well timed for next year's Presidential election, with one of the two Ks looking to keep control of the country. Just sayin'.

This is must-see footage. Over the weekend President Evo Morales played in a 'friendly' football (soccer if you like) game for the government MAS team versus the opposition MSM party, the party that holds the mayorship of La Paz. After a dirty tackle and some sort of mouthing off by the MSM team, Evo took justice into his own hands, footy field style:

Yep, a nice hard knee straight in the bollocks of the defender. The ref red-carded him and off he went. The match finished 4-4, by the way.

About time we saw this kind of action in a few regional congresses, methinks.

This was one small section of yesterday's IKN Weekly issue 74 and considered the passing of the so-called "Glacier Law" by Argentina's Senate last week. As usual in the 'Regional Politics' section of the weekly we try to cut through the debate and handwringing and get to the practical points that concern mining sector investors

Argentina’s ‘Glacier Law’ passes the Senate

On Thursday Argentina’s upper house, the Senate, finally voted through the so-called “Glacier Law” that’s designed to protect glaciers in the upper reaches of the Andean Cordillera and stop mining companies from disrupting them, thus guaranteeing them as a source of water supply etc. There were two law projects on the table for the Senate to vote on and the tougher-worded one of the two was passed by a vote of 35 to 33 (one abstention). Below in the appendix find a Reuters report (18) that neatly sums things up.

The practical results of the law passage (assuming President Cristina Fernandez signs it into law as she said she would) are currently under debate, with some saying the feature ‘Pascua Lama’ project of Barrick is under threat, while others saying no. So let’s make this as simple as possible: If this law threatens ABX at Pascua Lama in any way, be sure that Cristina will veto it. It’s really as simple as that. Fernandez is very pro-Pascua Lama, Barrick has already made provisions to its mining plan that mean Pascua Lama mineral directly under the nearby glacier will not be mined or even put in the mining plan and the talk from the environmental groups of this law being a triumph that will stop Pascua Lama in its tracks will be short-lived. The mine will happen, period.

However, the new law is likely to add an extra layer of bureaucracy (as if there weren’t enough already in Argentina) to other projects in the upper reaches of the Cordillera. One of the key points of the law is that Argentine Institute of Snow Research, Glaciology and Environmental Science (translated) is now in charge of making a nationwide inventory of glaciers and afterwards it will also be in charge of making the glacial studies needed for environmental permitting for any new mining project. In other words a new department is now involved in the permitting process, over and above all the current processes.

The bottom line is that 1) ABX will get its mine at Pascua Lama but 2) there may be a temporary delay or two due to it. Meanwhile 3) Argentina, already a pain in the butt when it comes to red tape, just saw another layer added to any company that wants to develop a high mountain project.

HEEEELP! Silver has plummeted to just TWENTY-TWO DOLLARS AN OUNCE! Disaster!!!! How on earth can a miner producing silver at a negative nine dollars an ounce cash cost possibly make any money now???? SELL SELL SELLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!

Last Thursday, President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay had a serious relapse in his current fight against cancer (he's under chemotherapy right now) and had to be rushed to the specialist hospital treating him in Brazil. Well, the good new is that today he's out of intensive care and likely to be discharged Wednesday.

LONDON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The global market for refined copper is expected to swing into a 400,000-tonne deficit for 2011 as increased economic activity boosts demand to outstrip growth of refined production, the International Copper Study Group said.

The group revised its forecast to a deficit from an estimate of a 240,000 tonnes surplus, made in April. "In 2011, refined usage is again expected to increase in all major world markets, with global demand expected to rise by about 4.5 percent," the ICSG said in a note on Friday. "Industrial demand growth for copper in China, which is based on anticipated semi-manufacture production, is expected to grow by about 6 percent in 2011," it said. China is the world's top consumer of copper, accounting for about one third of total demand.

The group also revised its 2010 forecast to a 200,000 tonne surplus, from an April estimate of 580,000 tonne surplus as growth in copper supply matches growth in copper demand, roughly in line with levels seen in 2009. During 2012, the market is expected to be more closely balanced, as an increase in refined copper production more than keeps pace with sustained demand growth.

Holy reds-in-beds, Batman! The Hoi-Polloi of Lima will be shaking in their boots to find themselves rules by a....sorry, can't do it cos she's not some raving hard lefty commie puppet. Susana Villarán, now looking very close to the winner's circle for the race to be Lima's mayor (58% of votes counted and she's over 2% up....in the world of stats that's getting very close to a lock), is a centre-left social democrat, an upholder of good things and someone who's railed against Castro and Chávez more times than is necessary for a human with a brain to understand where she's coming from.

Anyway, here's the vote count so far, at 8:40am Monday Lima time. Gotta love Peru...compare the 120m votes that Brazil counted and published in four hours last night to the 60% of 5m votes that Peru has taken 28 hours to count so far. Time to throw the abacuses away, dudes.

Finally, way back in 2008 this humble corner of cyberspace interviewed Villarán. You can find that Q&A on this linkto know more about her.

UPDATE: 2pm Lima time and the latest count with 65.188% of the votes officially registered is Vallarán 38.77%, Flores 37.18%. Data

10/3/10

Holy wowsers! Check out the numbers with 82.29% of the votes counted already:

Marina Silva of the Green Party, who was polling around 10% all through the election season (give or take), has taken chunks out of Dilma Rousseff's vote and stopped her from becoming President of Brazil until October 11th. Dilma will still win then (she runs off against Serra) but this result goes down as a minor shock if confirmed by the total count. Data from here.

IKN74 has just been sent to subscribers. Lots of words, lots of numbers and even a new buy reco included this week for a copper company. I'm now off to down a glass of decent Chilean CabSauv. Just one glass, mind you*. You be having a fun Sunday now y'all.

I heard this song the other day in my fave restaurant on a great sound system and thought "I like like like", a decent slice of the happy tropical-pop-salsa that South America does very well. But due to hearing it I looked Fanny Lu's biog up and it turns out that she's unspeakably beautiful, too. Fanny Lu is also 40, married, two kids, Colombian and I've heard plenty of her songs on the radio and stuff over time. So now that I've fallen just a little bit in love for a little while I thought I'd share before the infatuation wears off (cos it will...it always has done....except in one case so married her). Enjoy, she's got a great voice.

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